Microsoft in Talks to Buy Winamp and Shoutcast From AOL

We were saddened by the news yesterday when AOL announced that Winamp was officially shutting its doors on Dec. 20. Thankfully, the popular MP3 player may live to see another day. TechCrunch said Thursday that Microsoft is actually in talks with AOL to purchase Winamp and another original Nullsoft service, Shoutcast.

Microsoft, and now by association Nokia, already owns its own streaming radio platform through Nokia MixRadio, formerly known as Nokia Music, in addition to its own Xbox Music service. Nokia’s application lets you stream music or sign up for a monthly premium service that’s similar to Pandora, while Xbox Music is rather similar. Shoutcast, by comparison, provides free access to Internet radio stations with their own DJs instead of personally catered music channels. It’s unclear what Microsoft would do with Winamp, especially since it’s a relatively outdated music player.

TechCrunch did not disclose how much Microsoft may be paying for either property, though we imagine Microsoft could be getting a deal if AOL was planning to shut both services down anyway.